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What's the benefit of the new Intel Arrandale

frittino

frittino

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 31, 2009
49
0
Rome, Italy
I read that in the first quarter of 2010 Intel will release new laptop chip Arrendale and Apple will use it Macbooks quite soon.
What's the main benefit? I know Power consumption but in term of performance?

Is it worth waiting Arrendale?

thanks
Manuel
 
1. Less heat and lower power consumption: It has memory controller, CPU and GPU all in one small chip

2. Better performance per clock speed due the new 32nm tech

3. Turbo and hyper-threading: 2.66GHz model goes up to 3.33GHz and has 4 virtual cores

Basically, we don't know the real life benefits before they come
 
Basically I need a laptop for Mail, Office and VMware stuffs.
What's your suggestion? Waiting or it's not a big deal?

thanks
 
Seems to me that for what you need the computer for, you could go with last year's models and will be able to tell no difference.

The kind of performance boosts that these releases offer are really only noticeable to people who actually benefit from them using professional high demanding applications.

For browsing the web, listening to music, sending emails and using Microsoft Office these "improvements" are meaningless. RAM is probably the thing that will make your computer run faster irrespective of CPU and graphics card models.

So if you want to wait wait...it's always "nice" to have the latest and greatest even if it really makes no difference to an average computer user--you can get a 2 year old computer (stocked with enough RAM of course) and you will see no difference. Another reason to upgrade is of course changes in the computer's features outside of performance...better screen, better trackpads, lighter, battery improvements etc etc. Those come gradually as we all know, a 2 year old Core Duo MBP is significantly inferior in those respects, so even if the performance changes nothing for the average non-pro user, the computer itself has improved a lot.

Ultimately the MacBook Pro line was recently overhauled after many years design wise going back to the PowerBook days...the current line is going to stay as is or refined very gradually over time like the last models for a very long time. The next crop of processors will not bring with them radical design changes...the changes already took place a year ago. So if you want to wait for Apple to do something with the computer at the next update besides the new chips you will probably be disappointed.
 
^ You don't need to be a power user to reap the benefits of newer tech esp if it is going to do more w/less power. Your battery will thank you for it.

Stating the obvious here - if you don't need the efficiency / power - yes a pentium 4 will work as well. :)
 
ymarker said:
^ You don't need to be a power user to reap the benefits of newer tech esp if it is going to do more w/less power. Your battery will thank you for it.

Stating the obvious here - if you don't need the efficiency / power - yes a pentium 4 will work as well. :)
Click to expand...

Sure...but I'm not advising him to go get a 2 year old model. Just making a point that waiting for the next release vis a vis the current line will offer no noticeable improvement for the kinds of things he uses a computer for. So it really makes no sense to wait up to 5-6 more months for the update if you need the computer now and you use one for basic things. The Arrandate MBPs will not offer him anything noticeably better (on paper yes) for his real world use. Plus I don't think we will see any design changes to the lines at that time. The design is set for a while, it just got overhauled, the 13 inch especially, just 3 months ago with the inclusion of firewire, memory card reader, internal battery and better screen.

If he needs it now, he should buy it now and he will get a world class computer that will last many years design wise and performance wise for his uses.
 
This is why I tell most of my friends, do not buy your apple based off of my setup. You will be surprised to know, the amount of people who buy their macs based off of what they hear or see others doing. I'm a musician and use my computer to record & edit my music. So In my case I could use the extra power of the Arrandale chip, but I'm fine with the current setup I'm using. Once I learn a bit more and my needs change so will my computer.

If you are someone who does the basics emailing, blogging etc today's mac book or Imac would work out just fine with the current chip. Once you have established what you will be using your computer for, then you will have a better idea of how much power you really need. You could save yourself a lot of time & money. As Hellhammer stated, we don't know the real life benefits before they come. However this chip from what I read, is suppose to be really good.:apple:
 
New architectures from Intel are on a cycle they call "Tick-Tock" which lasts around 2 years. If you can wait for a new Intel architecture it's well worth it for any type of user because you know that the cpu will be the same basic architecture and the upgrades that come out during the cycle are incremental and you can be fairly certain that you won't want to upgrade because of a new cpu during that time. The other release that we can expect is a new gpu, but because of the issues nVidia has had with intel it's hard to predict. So... If you can wait, then wait and buy as soon as you can after the release.
 
frittino said:
Basically I need a laptop for Mail, Office and VMware stuffs.
What's your suggestion? Waiting or it's not a big deal?

thanks
Click to expand...
A 3 yr. old first generation C2D MBP will work just fine for those needs. You don't need a more powerful architecture.
 
frittino said:
Basically I need a laptop for Mail, Office and VMware stuffs.
What's your suggestion? Waiting or it's not a big deal?

thanks
Click to expand...

That depends on what you mean by "VMware stuffs". But then if you were doing anything sophisticated enough with VMWare to stretch today's hardware you probably wouldn't need to ask the question.
 
bartzilla said:
That depends on what you mean by "VMware stuffs". But then if you were doing anything sophisticated enough with VMWare to stretch today's hardware you probably wouldn't need to ask the question.
Click to expand...

I meant running virtual machines, doing office stuffs. I wonder if it's worth wait 3,4 months to benefit from latest CPU improvements.
thanks
 
frittino said:
I meant running virtual machines, doing office stuffs. I wonder if it's worth wait 3,4 months to benefit from latest CPU improvements.
thanks
Click to expand...

Running Office inside a virtual machine? The stuff that's already available is perfectly adequate for that. If you need now then buy now, imho.
 
I'm gonna go with the rest of the guys on here n say if you need it, buy it. The laptop line up in particular is the strongest it's been in a while n has been rated highly by people all over the place. You most likely won't benifit hugely from the new arrandale. :)
PTP
 
Hellhammer said:
Basically, we don't know the real life benefits before they come
Click to expand...
10% performance increase in single-threaded apps according to the SuperPi benchmark, more with HyperThreading and Turbo Boost. But yes, we need the CPUs before making any final judgments.
 
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